Bad Teacher

BAD TEACHER (2011) - July 15, 2011
About the eponymous bad teacher and her efforts to fund her breast implants by any means necessary, this was a surprisingly bad film from the otherwise very reliable Jake Kasdan (though having just looked up the writing duo of Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg and discovering that their last film was the awful Year One, I'm a bit less surprised -- how do you still get work after writing something so bad?).  Kasdan does the best he can given the material; what drew him to the film in the first place is a complete mystery.  The biggest problem here is Cameron Diaz's bad teacher.  Aside from a few brief glimpses of humanity, and a last-second redemption that feels completely unearned, she's a complete douchebag and a misguided main character for a movie.  I mean, not every protagonist has to be a "good" person, or even likable -- but they have to be interesting or nuanced, which Diaz's one-note jerk is definitely not.  There's also a grating performance from Lucy Punch as Diaz's nemesis; she plays every scene at an eleven and gives a performance that is way, way bigger than the movie really needs.  Everyone else was fine (Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet was definite highlight), and I was never all-out bored, but yeah... not the best.  **